July 2, 2009

• - Recently, Jack White of the White Stripes and Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin were heard making disparaging remarks on the video games Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Apparently they do not like that they exist, and are suppose to be counter productive in expanding music to kids of today. "It's depressing to have a label come and tell you that ['Guitar Hero'] is how kids are learning about music and experiencing music," White said. "If you have to be in a video game to get in front of them, that's a little sad." While Jimmy Page feels that these games are causing kids to not properly appreciate the work that the artists put into creating the music. Really now? I'm disappointed in them thinking like this. It's probably more a case of people once again talking about video games, when they don't know anything about them. I'm actually able to discover bands I've never heard of because of Rock Band or Guitar Hero, which can translate to album sales and attending concerts. People have taken up playing real guitar and drums because of these games. How is that not a positive thing for the music genre and industry? Seriously now. Some people need to take off their blinders on how video games existing can be a good thing. Stop with the unnecessary hate on video games.

  - Video games can inspire creativity, whether it be musically or... creativity in creating games. Just recently, Microsoft released their game creative software called "Kodu" for the xbox360. Kodu simply gives us the tools to make any games that we want to make (with some limitations of the software), be it racing games, RTS, shooting games, etc.... It's still very recent and I haven't seen that many examples online on the types of games people are making, but I wouldn't mind tinkering a little bit on it and maybe recreate a pac man or something. This is a nice simple way of getting people into thinking about the game making process, instead of just playing them. You can take a look at this video of it here... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVVYSUi-WeQ

  - On the subject of making games. I only recently came across this independently made game called "Eversion." It starts off like some Mario Bros clone platformer type game, but the theme of it surprisingly changes.... to... hhmm, I don't really want to spoil it. Part of the fun is in discovering how the game "evolves" or "devolves" hehe. It's a great idea, and I would mind seeing a bigger budgeted version of it for the home consoles. Check it out yourself. It's a relatively small game that you can finish in one sitting, so download it here... http://zarat.us/tra/offline-games/eversion.html or you can just cheat and watch the walk through videos here... http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=6FB33BE54D9AB094

  • 4:22 pm
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